Co-father relationships among the Suruí (Paiter) of Brazil
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Abstract
Partible paternity refers to the conception belief that children can have multiple fathers (“co-fathers”) and is common to indigenous cultures of lowland South America. The nature of social relationships observed between co-fathers reveals information about the reproductive strategies underlying partible paternity. Here we analyze clan, genealogical, and social relationships between co-fathers for the Suruí, an indigenous horticultural population in Brazil. We show that co-fathers roughly assort into two separate categories. In the affiliative category, co-father relationships are amicable when they are between close kin, namely brothers and father-son. In the competitive category, relationships are more likely of avoidance or open hostility when between more distant kin such as cousins or unrelated men of different clans. Results therefore imply multiple types of relationships, including both cooperative and competitive contexts, under the rubric of partible paternity. These complexities of partible paternity institutions add to our knowledge of the full range of cross-cultural variation in human mating/marriage arrangements and speak to the debate on whether or not humans should be classified as cooperative breeders.
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2015. Co-father relationships among the Suruí (Paiter) of Brazil. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e843v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.843v2note This preprint is not peer-reviewed. You may wish to reference the subsequent peer-reviewed version of this article.
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This is a manuscript under a second round of review at PeerJ.
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Competing Interests
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Robert S Walker conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Cédric Yvinec performed the experiments, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Ryan M Ellsworth wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Drew H Bailey analyzed the data, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Human Ethics
The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):
Fieldwork among the Suruí was authorized in Brazil by the Minister of Science and Technology (MCT, portaria n° 129 de 09/03/2005), the National Center for Research (CNPq, processo CMC 052/2004) and by the National Foundation of the Indian (FUNAI, autorisação n° 25/CGEP/05, processo CMC 2905/04).
Funding
Ethnographic data were collected by Yvinec in 2005-2007 and 2013 with financial support from the EHESS (Paris), Collège de France, and Fondation Fyssen. Analysis of the data and interpretation of the results were conducted by Walker, Ellsworth, and Bailey with financial support provided by a National Geographic Society Research and Exploration grant (#9165-12). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
